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Old Nubian (also called Middle Nubian or Old Nobiin) is an extinct
Nubian Nubian may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Nubia, a region along the Nile river in Southern Egypt and northern Sudan. *Nubian people *Nubian languages *Anglo-Nubian goat, a breed of goat * Nubian ibex * , several ships of the Britis ...
language, attested in writing from the 8th to the 15th century AD. It is ancestral to modern-day Nobiin and closely related to Dongolawi and Kenzi. It was used throughout the kingdom of
Makuria Makuria (Old Nubian: , ''Dotawo''; gr, Μακουρία, Makouria; ar, المقرة, al-Muqurra) was a Nubians, Nubian monarchy, kingdom located in what is today Northern Sudan and Southern Egypt. Makuria originally covered the area along the N ...
, including the
eparchy Eparchy ( gr, ἐπαρχία, la, eparchía / ''overlordship'') is an ecclesiastical unit in Eastern Christianity, that is equivalent to a diocese in Western Christianity. Eparchy is governed by an ''eparch'', who is a bishop. Depending on the ...
of Nobatia. The language is preserved in more than a hundred pages of documents and inscriptions, both of a religious (homilies, prayers, hagiographies, psalms, lectionaries), and related to the state and private life (legal documents, letters), written using an adaptation of the
Coptic alphabet The Coptic alphabet is the script used for writing the Coptic language. The repertoire of glyphs is based on the Greek alphabet augmented by letters borrowed from the Egyptian Demotic and is the first alphabetic script used for the Egyptian ...
.


History

Old Nubian had its source in the languages of the Noba nomads who occupied the
Nile The Nile, , Bohairic , lg, Kiira , Nobiin: Áman Dawū is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is the longest river in Africa and has historically been considered the longest riv ...
between the first and third
cataracts of the Nile The Cataracts of the Nile are shallow lengths (or whitewater rapids) of the Nile river, between Khartoum and Aswan, where the surface of the water is broken by many small boulders and stones jutting out of the river bed, as well as many r ...
and the
Makuria Makuria (Old Nubian: , ''Dotawo''; gr, Μακουρία, Makouria; ar, المقرة, al-Muqurra) was a Nubians, Nubian monarchy, kingdom located in what is today Northern Sudan and Southern Egypt. Makuria originally covered the area along the N ...
n nomads who occupied the land between the third and fourth cataracts following the collapse of Meroë sometime in the 4th century. The Makurians were a separate tribe who eventually conquered or inherited the lands of the Noba: they established a
Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...
-influenced state called
Makuria Makuria (Old Nubian: , ''Dotawo''; gr, Μακουρία, Makouria; ar, المقرة, al-Muqurra) was a Nubians, Nubian monarchy, kingdom located in what is today Northern Sudan and Southern Egypt. Makuria originally covered the area along the N ...
which administered the Noba lands separately as the
eparchy Eparchy ( gr, ἐπαρχία, la, eparchía / ''overlordship'') is an ecclesiastical unit in Eastern Christianity, that is equivalent to a diocese in Western Christianity. Eparchy is governed by an ''eparch'', who is a bishop. Depending on the ...
of Nobatia. Nobatia was converted to the Miaphysite Christianity by Julian of Halicarnassus and Longinus, and thereafter received its bishops from the
Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria The Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church ( cop, Ⲡⲁⲡⲁ, translit=Papa; ar, البابا, translit=al-Bābā), also known as the Bishop of Alexandria, is the leader of the Coptic Orthodox Church, with ancient Christian roots in Egypt. Th ...
. Old Nubian is one of the oldest written
African languages The languages of Africa are divided into several major language families: * Niger–Congo or perhaps Atlantic–Congo languages (includes Bantu and non-Bantu, and possibly Mande and others) are spoken in West, Central, Southeast and Souther ...
and appears to have been adopted from the 10th–11th century as the main language for the civil and religious administration of Makuria. Besides Old Nubian,
Koine Greek Koine Greek (; Koine el, ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος, hē koinè diálektos, the common dialect; ), also known as Hellenistic Greek, common Attic, the Alexandrian dialect, Biblical Greek or New Testament Greek, was the common supra-reg ...
was widely used, especially in religious contexts, while Coptic mainly predominates in funerary inscriptions. Over time, more and more Old Nubian began to appear in both secular and religious documents ( including the Bible), while several grammatical aspects of Greek, including the case, agreement, gender, and tense morphology underwent significant erosion. The consecration documents found with the remains of archbishop
Timotheos Timotheus is a masculine male name. It is a latinized version of the Greek name (Timόtheos) mmeaning "one who honours God", from τιμή "honour" and θεός "god"., . The English version '' Timothy'' (and its variations) is a common name in ...
suggest, however, that Greek and Coptic continued to be used into the late 14th century, by which time Arabic was also in widespread use.


Writing

The script in which nearly all Old Nubian texts have been written is a slanted uncial variant of the
Coptic alphabet The Coptic alphabet is the script used for writing the Coptic language. The repertoire of glyphs is based on the Greek alphabet augmented by letters borrowed from the Egyptian Demotic and is the first alphabetic script used for the Egyptian ...
, originating from the White Monastery in
Sohag Sohag ( , ), also spelled as ''Sawhāj'', ''Suhag'' and ''Suhaj'', is a city on the west bank of the Nile in Egypt. It has been the capital of Sohag Governorate since 1960, before which the capital was Girga and the name of the governorate was ...
. The alphabet included three additional letters and , and , the first two deriving from the
Meroitic alphabet The Meroitic script consists of two alphasyllabic scripts developed to write the Meroitic language at the beginning of the Meroitic Period (3rd century BC) of the Kingdom of Kush. The two scripts are Meroitic Cursive, derived from Demotic Eg ...
. The presence of these characters suggest that although the first written evidence of Old Nubian dates to the 8th century, the script must have already been developed in the 6th century, following the collapse of the Meroitic state. Additionally, Old Nubian used the variant for the Coptic letter . The characters only appear in Greek loanwords.
Gemination In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from ...
was indicated by writing double consonants; long vowels were usually not distinguished from short ones. Old Nubian featured two digraphs: and . A diaeresis over () was used to indicate the
semivowel In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel, glide or semiconsonant is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of a syllable. Examples of semivowels in English are the c ...
. In addition, Old Nubian featured a supralinear stroke, which could indicate: * a
vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (len ...
that formed the beginning of a syllable or was preceded by ; * an /i/ preceding a
consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced w ...
. Modern Nobiin is a tonal language; if Old Nubian was tonal as well, the tones were not marked. Punctuation marks included a high dot •, sometimes substituted by a double backslash \\ (), which was used roughly like an English period or colon; a slash / (), which was used like a
question mark The question mark (also known as interrogation point, query, or eroteme in journalism) is a punctuation mark that indicates an interrogative clause or phrase in many languages. History In the fifth century, Syriac Bible manuscripts used ...
; and a double slash // (), which was sometimes used to separate verses. In 2021, the first modern Nubian
typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are thousands o ...
based on the style of text written in old Nubian manuscripts called Sawarda was released designed by Hatim-Arbaab Eujayl for a series of educational books teaching Nobiin.


Grammar


Nouns

Old Nubian has no
gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most culture ...
. The
noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, ...
consists of a stem to which
derivational suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry gr ...
es may be added.
Plural The plural (sometimes list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical number, grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the ...
markers,
case Case or CASE may refer to: Containers * Case (goods), a package of related merchandise * Cartridge case or casing, a firearm cartridge component * Bookcase, a piece of furniture used to store books * Briefcase or attaché case, a narrow box to ca ...
markers,
postposition Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
s, and the
determiner A determiner, also called determinative ( abbreviated ), is a word, phrase, or affix that occurs together with a noun or noun phrase and generally serves to express the reference of that noun or noun phrase in the context. That is, a determine ...
are added on the entire
noun phrase In linguistics, a noun phrase, or nominal (phrase), is a phrase that has a noun or pronoun as its head or performs the same grammatical function as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently oc ...
, which may also comprise
adjective In linguistics, an adjective ( abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ...
s, possessors, and
relative clause A relative clause is a clause that modifies a noun or noun phraseRodney D. Huddleston, Geoffrey K. Pullum, ''A Student's Introduction to English Grammar'', CUP 2005, p. 183ff. and uses some grammatical device to indicate that one of the argument ...
s.


Determination

Old Nubian has one definite determiner . The precise function of this
morpheme A morpheme is the smallest meaningful Constituent (linguistics), constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistics, linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology (linguistics), morphology. In English, morphemes are ...
has been a matter of controversy, with some scholars proposing it as
nominative In grammar, the nominative case ( abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or (in Latin and formal variants of Eng ...
case or subjective marker. Both the distribution of the morpheme and comparative evidence from Meroitic, however, point to a use as determiner.


Case

Old Nubian has a nominative-accusative case system with four structural cases determining the core arguments in the sentence, as well as a number of lexical cases for
adverbial phrase In linguistics, an ''adverbial phrase'' ("AdvP") is a multi-word expression operating adverbially: its syntactic function is to modify other expressions, including verbs, adjectives, adverbs, adverbials, and sentences. Adverbial phrases can be ...
s.


Number

The most common plural marker is , which always precedes case marking. There are a few irregular plurals, such as , pl. "man"; , pl. "child." Furthermore, there are traces of separate animate plural forms in , which are textually limited to a few roots, e.g. "Christians"; "dogs."


Pronouns

Old Nubian has several sets of
pronoun In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun ( abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not ...
s and subject
clitic In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a ...
s are the following, of which the following are the main ones: There are two
demonstrative pronouns Demonstratives (abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular frame ...
: , pl. "this" and , pl. "that."
Interrogative word An interrogative word or question word is a function word used to ask a question, such as ''what, which'', ''when'', ''where'', '' who, whom, whose'', ''why'', ''whether'' and ''how''. They are sometimes called wh-words, because in English most ...
s include "who?"; "what?"; and a series of question words based on the root .


Verbs

The Old Nubian verbal system is by far the most complex part of its grammar, allowing for valency, tense, mood, aspect,
person A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...
and
pluractionality In linguistics, pluractionality, or verbal number, if not used in its aspectual sense, is a grammatical aspect that indicates that the action or participants of a verb is/are plural. This differs from frequentative or iterative aspects in that ...
to be expressed on it through a variety of suffixes. The main distinction between nominal and verbal predicates in a main clause versus a subordinate clause is indicated by the presence of the predicate marker . The major categories, listing from the root of the verb to the right, are as follows:


Valency


Pluractionality


Aspect


Tense


Person

This can be indicated by a three different series of subject clitics, which are obligatory only in certain grammatical contexts.


Sample text

* P.QI 1 4.ii.25 * ''kit-ka gelgel-os-ou-an-non iēsousi mañan tri-ka dolle polgar-a pes-s-n-a pap-o iskel-im-m-e eik-ka'' * stone-ACC roll-PFV-PST1-3PL-TOP Jesus eye.DU both-ACC high raise.CAUS-PRED speak-PST2-2/3/SG-PRED father-VOC thank-AFF-PRS-1SG.PRED you-ACC "And when they rolled away the rock, Jesus raised his eyes high and said: Father, I thank you."


Notes


References

* * * * * * * * * *


Other sources

* Browne, Gerald M., (1982) ''Griffith's Old Nubian Lectionary.'' Rome / Barcelona. * Browne, Gerald M., (1988) ''Old Nubian Texts from Qasr Ibrim I'' (with J. M. Plumley), London, UK. * Browne, Gerald M., (1989) ''Old Nubian Texts from Qasr Ibrim II''. London, UK. * Browne, Gerald M., (1996) ''Old Nubian dictionary''. Corpus scriptorum Christianorum orientalium, vol. 562. Leuven: Peeters. . * Browne, Gerald M., (1997) ''Old Nubian dictionary - appendices''. Leuven: Peeters. . * Browne, Gerald M., (2002) ''A grammar of Old Nubian''. Munich: LINCOM. . * Griffith, F. Ll., (1913) ''The Nubian Texts of the Christian Period''. ADAW 8. https://archive.org/details/nubiantextsofchr00grif * Satzinger, Helmut, (1990) ''Relativsatz und Thematisierung im Altnubischen.'' Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 80, 185–205.


External links

* Extended details on all the letters of the Old Nubian alphabet, especially the additional ones, can be found i
this Unicode proposal
by
Michael Everson Michael Everson (born January 9, 1963) is an American and Irish linguist, script encoder, typesetter, type designer and publisher. He runs a publishing company called Evertype, through which he has published over a hundred books since 2006. H ...
and
Stephen Emmel Stephen Emmel is a Coptologist and musician. Academic career Stephen Emmel was born in Rochester, NY, 27 June 1952, and earned his B.A. from Syracuse University in 1973 (department of religion). He began graduate study with James M. Robinson, who ...
. *
Old Nubian basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
{{DEFAULTSORT:Old Nubian language Nubian languages Nubian language, old Nubian language, old Writing systems of Africa History of Sudan